10.31.2013

It Might Just Be You...

Mumma was reading another in a long string of articles about the curse of the color black in canine rescue.  It all boils down to this: if you’re a larger dog and your coat color is black, you’re just about doomed.  If you’re a smaller dog and your coat color is black, you are slightly less doomed than the larger dog, but still pretty doomed. 

It’s insidious and probably goes back to our earliest superstitions.  Black has always been associated with bad things.  Witches, devils, darkness, evil, the bad guy in the Western movies.  Black animals have been considered familiars for all the nasty things that go bump in the night.  We laugh about it but way deep down it has a hold on us.  All the black dogs and cats waiting for adoption in the shelters can attest to this.

I’m sure you’re shaking your head, no that’s not me.  I am fine with black dogs and cats.  But ask yourself this, have you ever owned a black animal?  The majority of us will have to answer no.  It’s not that you go to the shelter or the breeder or wherever and say, I hate black dogs, I’m not going to adopt one (though some
My Bettina Bat Girl Black Dog Greyhound
may actually say this to themselves).  You go to the shelter and the light colored dogs all look prettier than the black dogs.  They look friendlier or friskier.  We’re predisposed to overlook the black dogs without even realizing it.

There are people out there who are doing everything they can to find homes for the chromatically challenged.  One lady has started a website called Black Pearl Dogs.  It highlights all that is amazing and good about these dogs.  Trying to cut through the clutter of brain stem evolution and maybe get you to consider the great dogs underneath that coat color.  Please check this website out and share it with your friends.

Next time you’re at the shelter please stop and take some time with a black coated dog.  Even if he doesn’t seem as “pretty” as the other dogs.  You’ll find out that they’re all as special and unique, as lively, frisky, loving and snuggly as all the other dogs.  And they’re more in need than the other dogs since they are more likely to be euthanized or languish for years in the shelter system without your help.  We can attest first hand that life with a chromatically challenged dog is wonderful.  We know from our experiences with our own Bat Girl.  Besides that, black goes with everything and everything looks good on a black dog. 


Happy Halloween!  

10.16.2013

In Celebration of Our GG

This year Grammy asked me if she could also write a post in honor of Girly Girl.   And really who better than the Grammy she loved only slightly less than she loved me to share with you all the best parts of Girly Girl.


Girly Girl left us far too early but in her short tenure with us she taught us so much.  She was sent to my daughter to show her there is indeed unconditional love; also that everyone makes mistakes, even if done out of love.  She showed her how to enjoy the moment, look at the world from two feet off the ground.  How to enjoy what you have instead of what you want and how what you want is not always what you need. 

Not all lessons were learned in total but they opened the door.  How ‘regret’ and ‘guilt’ are tremendous wastes of energy with little return value.

How exterior appearances mean little when it comes to true love and the small can be mighty.
Blue, Grammy and Girly Girl
One of Mumma's favorite photos of all time.  Blue, Grammy and Girly Girl

Her eyes were chocolate and simmering with warmth, and melted the hardest heart.  But she didn’t give her love out lightly.  She was particular and only knew two depths of affection; the deepest love and respectful indifference.

She taught us what true strength was.  The quiet, determined, accepting strength  that is so hard to acquire.  She would have continued to live on if given the option, blood coming from her nose, pain racking her body, she would have lived on.  But the final lesson was the toughest ~ to know when to let go.

Sleep softly our darling princess.


~ Her Grammy

10.12.2013

Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

Three years.  Three years today since Girly Girl tore open the heart I had given her to hold for me.  I had plans to try and write something this year that was more upbeat and focused more on the gifts she gave me instead of the intense grief that I still feel even now.  But unfortunately for us all, 3 years does not seem to have been enough time to form a scab or scar tissue.  It’s still way too raw. 

Instead I will leave you with a poem that has always made me think of my girl and the first line of which inspired one of her nicknames:
The Tiger
by William Blake

TIGER, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?


In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?


And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand and what dread feet?


What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?


When the stars threw down their spears,

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

My tiger tiger burning bright


I miss you tiger.
2/15/03-10/12/10

10.08.2013

Me, ME, MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!


It is Bettina Greyhounds 5th Birthday Today
Today is Bettina's 5th Birthday


Blue and Bettina get birthday treats
I'll take mine rare please


Blue Greyhound Nose Licking Good
Nose licking good!

Bettina Greyhound What Hat?
It's ALL About MEEEEEEE!
 


Blue and Bettina Greyhound on Bettina's 5th Birthday
Thanks for the marrow bone, I mean presents Mumma!